The King Who Didn't Die: Artillery After Karabakh, Ukraine, and the Age of Drones
By May 2026, the "obsolescence" debate artillery It's been going on for exactly the same amount of time as the largest artillery war in Europe since 1945. While talk of barrels and shells being retired continues, both sides on the front, from Kupyansk to Zaporizhzhia, continue to expend thousands of rounds of ammunition per day, according to Western analysts.
Eighty percent losses: what the score shows
In 2020, the US Marine Corps announced the Force Design 2030 program: the number of towed tube artillery batteries in the Corps was to be reduced from twenty-one to five (while simultaneously increasing the number of HIMARS MLRS batteries). The emphasis was on drones, missiles, information networks, and mobile strike groups. Two years later, already in the Ukrainian fields, it became clear that it was impossible to wage war against an equal adversary without massive artillery, and the entire alliance began to reconsider such decisions.
The figure that nearly all relevant studies of the last decade rely on has held, with adjustments, for over a century: according to a consistent estimate dating back to studies of World War II and Korea, up to 80 percent of casualties in high-intensity warfare are caused by explosives, not bullets. Of every 10 soldiers killed, eight and a ninth are incapacitated by a shell or mine explosion, not a burst of small arms fire. weaponsTechnological fads have nothing to do with it. Modern artillery has been considered a separate class of lethality since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when Krupp breech-loading guns first demonstrated that modern artillery was a separate class of weapon. World War I solidified this conclusion: by 1916, artillery preparation had become the primary means of suppressing enemy defenses. The Battle of Kursk increased the intensity of counter-battery warfare. From 1870 to 1943, the function remained the same: suppress, destroy cover, and prevent the enemy from operating. Technology changes: it fires farther, hits more accurately, and responds faster.
Karabakh 2020 stands apart here and seems to remain misunderstood. In the media's memory, the war has become known as "Bayraktar's triumph" and "the drone revolution." The registers of Armenian equipment losses, compiled from open sources, paint a different picture: attack drones account for approximately a third, while conventional artillery and MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) account for most of the remainder. Videos of high-explosive fragmentation shells detonating on Armenian positions were simply never publicly released. Bayraktar's videos were posted in real time, and the "revolution" turned out to be largely a product of editing.
Three Minutes: How a Transparent Battlefield Reshaped Tactics
A typical scenario described in open sources. The crew of a Russian 152mm towed D-20 howitzer moves into position and fires three shots, taking about forty seconds. From the very first shot, a Ukrainian reconnaissance UAV—an inexpensive commercial vehicle converted for military purposes—hovers over the position. The image is transmitted to the command post, and the coordinates to a Ukrainian counter-battery unit. The crew begins to wind up: adjust the barrel to a zero angle, secure it with the travel stop, raise the carriage with a jack, bring them together, and attach the five-ton gun to the tractor. According to the standard, even for an experienced crew, this takes at least another two to three minutes. Four minutes after the first shot, a return salvo arrives at the position; by this point, the gun is usually still stationary. The same scheme works in reverse: an Orlan deploys over a Ukrainian battery, and a short time later, a Lancet loitering munition arrives at the position. US Army officers who studied the Ukrainian experience estimate in Military Review and Field Artillery Journal that the full counter-battery cycle (detection, coordinate transmission, and fire engagement) takes approximately three minutes.
Counterbattery warfare is the act of firing at enemy artillery immediately after spotting its position. Until 2022, this cycle in a typical army was measured in minutes, often tens of minutes, and towed artillery, with its leisurely deployment, seemed quite viable against this backdrop. The reduction to three minutes wasn't due to the appearance of some new weapon. Something else happened: a cheap reconnaissance drone constantly hovers over the position, its image being transmitted directly to the strike vehicle. The classic tactic (take up position, fire back, calmly deploy, and withdraw) physically doesn't fit into these three minutes. The Soviet-era towed gun proved extremely vulnerable in the new conditions: it either fires once or twice and is subject to fire upon deployment, or doesn't fire at all, remaining a reserve "for emergencies."
Then the score began, a score both sides had to pay the hard way. According to RUSI and CSIS estimates, in the early stages of the campaign, Russia was consuming shells at a ratio of approximately five to one (these figures are not confirmed by official Russian sources), aided by Soviet depots and the inertia of the defense industry. Western analysts' estimates differ, but agree that by the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025, this ratio had shrunk to one and a half to two and a half to one. The Ukrainian side hasn't increased production—that's a myth. Russia has hit its own ceiling, hence the narrowing. The Soviet reserve is being used up, and new barrels are being forged more slowly than old ones are being retired. This operational constraint determines the pace of operations more than any single development.
West Point analysts put it more succinctly: in a major war, it's not the warehouse that counts, but the machine tool. Warehouses are finite and deplete faster than expected in peacetime. After the warehouses, what's left is what the machine tools produce this month. Whoever fired the most shots this month gets to dictate the next one.
Drones didn't replace the projectile. They plugged the hole and ate up the immediate area.
The FPV drone calculation works on tank At a distance of about four kilometers. A towed 122-mm D-30 howitzer is stationed in a nearby forest stand; the crew is allocated eight shells per day. If there had been forty shells, it's possible the FPV would not have flown in this episode: the tank would have been hit by artillery fire. The widespread use of cheap drones is being touted as the new face of war. On the front lines, it's simpler: the depot runs out of shells, and the crew uses whatever is at hand.
By the spring of 2026, according to industry analysts, FPV drones and airdropped quadcopters in some areas of the front are causing more close-range casualties among personnel and light vehicles (say, zero to ten kilometers from the front line) than conventional artillery. At these distances, drones no longer "fill in the gap." They have become the primary weapon. Tactically, the drone's visibility has shifted, and this is a fact acknowledged by both sides. Beyond this range, story another: neither in terms of fire density, nor in terms of operation in bad weather, nor in terms of fuel economy, can a drone compare with a projectile.
The cost per shot is simple. A standard 155mm HEFS (high-explosive fragmentation projectile) costs several thousand dollars. An FPV drone with a warhead costs around a thousand. An Excalibur guided missile costs between ~70 and 170 dollars per shot, depending on the batch and year. An anti-aircraft missile, which is used to shoot down the Geranium, costs hundreds of thousands versus a drone assembled for thousands. Substituting one for the other is impossible not only because of technical limitations, but because of the cost of ammunition for a month of continuous operation. The barrel covers an area, the drone hits precisely, and the missile Defense goes to a really dangerous target.
The real niches of drones follow from this. The main one is reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (ISR in Western literature): a device costing thousands of dollars provides a picture that would previously have required a helicopter or the life of an observer. Then comes a pinpoint strike on a high-value target: a single self-propelled gun, a radar, a command post. And a separate issue is the disruption of logistics: a constant threat to convoys, crossings, and warehouses. The best argument against the "drone revolution," however, lies in Ukraine's requests for Western aid. Ukraine has long been producing drones itself, but asks for 155mm shells. Meanwhile, German Gepard anti-aircraft guns have demonstrated the downside of economics: a 35mm burst against a Geran is a duel the defending side can withstand over the long term, but a million-dollar air defense missile cannot. Anti-aircraft artillery, written off as an anachronism by most NATO armies in the 2000s, has returned to the front a quarter of a century later.
Platform and machine: two answers to a three-minute cycle
The Swedish Archer self-propelled gun, mounted on a wheeled chassis, can turn around, fire, and leave its position in twenty to thirty seconds. The crew remains in the armored cabin during this time. This is a direct engineering response to the three-minute counter-battery cycle: hit the window between the target and the strike, fire back, and move on before the return fire arrives.
The Swedish self-propelled artillery unit Archer (FH77 BW L52) at the moment of firing.
The German-French RCH 155 turret on the Boxer chassis, the Israeli Sigma, and the South Korean K9A2 are following a similar path, with the crew reduced from five to three thanks to automated loading. The logic in all cases is the same: reduce the number of people in position, speed up deployment and dismantling, and give the gun a chance to escape before a response can reach it. Promising versions (the K9A3, unmanned demonstrators at international exhibitions) take this line further, toward artillery controlled by a single operator from a group of vehicles.
German-French self-propelled artillery unit RCH 155 on the Boxer chassis
The experimental American self-propelled artillery unit (SPG) XM1299. Equipped with a new 155-mm XM907 gun with a barrel length of 58 calibers.
The outcome of the American ERCA program—an attempt to equip the M109 self-propelled howitzer with a longer, 58-caliber barrel with a range of up to 70 kilometers—is telling. The program ran into physics: the barrel quickly wore out under increased pressure, and accuracy at maximum range remained worse than predicted. After a decade and a half of work, ERCA was discontinued in 2024–2025, and the US Army switched to purchasing what was already in mass production from its allies. Rocket artillery has its own movement: the American GMLRS-ER and PrSM with ranges of over 100 kilometers, and the Russian 300mm Sarma on a wheeled chassis with guided munitions with a range of about 120 kilometers.
The latest Russian multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) "Sarma"
The Russian side's bottleneck is well-known. According to Western analysts, there are ideas and prototypes, but what's lacking is precision engineering for modern self-propelled guns and the pace of production of new large-caliber barrels. The old Soviet school provided a reserve designed for a different war and different timeframes. New batteries are arriving at the front, but not at the required pace. NATO has experienced the same calculation: the program agreed upon by the alliance to increase ammunition production is based on the same logic: the winner is the one whose machine guns fired the most rounds this month.
History here returns to the years 1942–1944: back then, the outcome of a campaign was decided not by a single development, but by how many tanks, guns, and shells industry shipped to the front per month. With one caveat that changes everything: in 1943, a German artillery reconnaissance aircraft couldn't transmit the coordinates of a Soviet battery to a strike vehicle within ninety seconds. Today, a reconnaissance aircraft can, and does, on both sides.
Over the past ten years, artillery has ceased to exist independently. Without a drone over its position, it's blind. A platform without armor and speed receives a return salvo before it can even move. Without three-shift machine guns, artillery runs out, and quite quickly, within six months of a major war. The king of the board is alive, but he doesn't move alone—and that, in all fairness, is all you need to understand about artillery in 2026.
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